Have you ever experienced the loss of a family member?
Did this loss affect you in some terrible way?
Christmas is particularly one of those
times when the death of someone you are close to affects you so deeply. It’s a
holiday season that is supposed to be happy and joyful. For me it was like that
for many years. Before 2002, I could not envision Christmas Day without every
one of my family members being there. But on Christmas Day of 2002, all that
changed for me and my family. After that, nothing would ever be the same.
We had all gathered at my parents’ place in
Agincourt, as usual. There was my Dad, Ethan, who was in his usual jovial
holiday mood, drinking his wine. And my Mom, Aileen, equally jovial in her element,
was busy cooking a big turkey dinner in the kitchen. There was my sister,
Carrie, her husband, Matthew, and their two kids Elena and Johnny. There was
also my brother, Ralph, his wife, Barbara, and their two girls Teresa and
Jackie. Then, later in the afternoon, my youngest sister, Suzie, would arrive
from Port Perry, Ontario, with her husband, Dennis, and their three young kids
Danny, Shirley and Bobby. My name is Andie (short for Andrea) and I was there,
naturally, with my teenage son, Brad.
We all came to Mom’s and Dad’s place every
year at this time because Mom was the centre of our Christmas Day celebrations.
It was something we all knew but never said out loud. Without her to “weave her
magic” in the kitchen and produce a meal that was absolutely perfect and
delicious, it wouldn’t have been nearly as special. She certainly knew how to
cook and bake! I’m sure she learned these skills from her own mother, my
grandmother (known as “Mummu,” in Finnish) who was well-known as an excellent
cook and baker in her day!
My mother was a warm and loving woman. She
was, in fact, the quintessential matriarch. We all loved her so much. I used to
call her “my Mummy” and tell her, “I love you, Mummy!” whenever I visited. I
would then hug and kiss her. I know she loved getting that kind of attention
from us kids. She certainly never complained about all the loving attention we
lavished upon her. I think she was an excellent role model for how to be a
mother. I was lucky in that respect.
Mom could not only cook and bake; she could
sew up a storm on her sewing machine, as well as knit, pearl and crochet. These
were skills that were prized in homemakers when I was young. She also kept a
spotless house, did the laundry for all of us as our family grew in size and
washed and dried the dishes every evening after dinner.
Later on, when I was a teenager, I also
learned how to cook and bake. In fact, baking cakes and pies became my
specialty and was one of my favourite pastimes. I would help with the dishes
after dinner most of the time, babysit my kid sisters whenever Mom and Dad went
out and do whatever I could to keep my own bedroom clean and tidy. Mom never
spoiled me, and I was grateful for that. She taught me how important a good
work ethic is. She was a hardworking, stay-at-home mother until I turned 15.
Then she went back to work full time at the CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of
Commerce). She had always worked full time previous to my birth, so working
outside of home was not at all unusual for her.
During her 15-year banking career at the
CIBC, she managed to work her way up to the level of branch administrator (a
supervisor of a few dozen part-timers and full timers). Since Mom had had only
a formal education up to Grade 8 but had clearly demonstrated abilities far beyond
that, the CIBC personnel department eventually upgraded her employee record to
show that she had achieved the equivalent of Grade 12! She was, indeed, a very
talented person, both at home and at work!
On Christmas Day 2002, we had all gathered
together as usual at my parents’ place. All seventeen of us were present. Mom
was busier than usual in the kitchen, but she was so organized, she made the
task of cooking Christmas dinner for seventeen people look relatively easy. We
all had our preliminary drinks and snacks, and then dinner was ready about five
thirty. It was delicious as usual, with tender turkey meat, homemade stuffing,
gravy and cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, turnip casserole, carrots and peas,
dinner rolls and a luscious dessert.
After dinner, we opened our gifts. All the
little kids got lots of presents on purpose, but the adults had just picked
names from a hat to see for whom they would each buy a gift. Each adult would
only have to buy one gift for one adult. However, the kids got as many gifts as
anyone wanted to give them. I thought I had drawn Matthew’s name from the hat, but in
reality, it was Mom’s name I
had drawn. What I think happened was that I lost the slip of paper with the
selected person’s name on it and then was too embarrassed to try and retrieve
the name I’d chosen. Because of my mistake, I felt so bad now that Mom had no gift
and Matthew had two. So,
Matthew offered Mom one of his gifts (a hard cover novel) but, Ralph said he
would take Mom shopping right after Christmas instead and she could pick out
something for herself. He said I could pay him back for her gift later. Around
eighty thirty or nine we were all thinking about going home. Brad had gone out
earlier with our family friend Dean to go snowploughing, as it had been snowing
heavily all day. They were going up to Richmond Hill, north of the city, to
work for Germaine, who owned a snowploughing business and had lots of clients
up there who required this kind of service. Meanwhile, I did not have a ride
home. I would’ve gotten a ride home with Ralph again, but I believed he and his
family were going somewhere else besides straight home that night.
Dad then offered me a ride and wanted Mom
to drive, as he’d been drinking fairly steadily and didn’t think he should
drive (and he was right!). Mom said she was willing to drive, but when I
thought about it later, I didn’t know for sure if she really was.
Anyway, we wanted to take off soon after
everyone else had left. Brad and I lived at Sheppard Avenue East and Meadowvale
Road, and it was a fair distance away. The roads were snowy and slippery, and
we had to go slowly and carefully. I hoped there wouldn’t be any problems. There
weren’t many cars on the road at that time. I guess most people had had the
good sense to stay home. On later reflection, I wished I’d phoned for a taxi,
but even taxis were few and far between that day. I guess I could also have
stayed over at my parents’ place that night; I probably should have made that
suggestion, but somehow it did not happen.
When we finally left my parents’ place, Mom
was driving, Dad was in the front passenger seat and I was in the backseat
behind Mom. We started out by taking the back-roads route over to Huntingwood
Drive; from there, we went east to Brimley Road and then south to Sheppard
Avenue. From there we went eastbound along Sheppard toward Meadowvale.
On Sheppard, just east of Neilson Road, I
had noticed that the snow had been ploughed on the westbound lanes but not yet
on the eastbound lanes. As a result, a small snow drift had formed right in the
middle of the road. The car’s left wheels kept getting caught in this snow
drift, and the car was beginning to swerve back and forth as a result.
All of a sudden, the car started spinning
wildly around and around very quickly in a thick cloud of snow. I had no idea
where we were headed. Then, just as suddenly, the car jerked to a stop. Apparently, during its rapid spinning, the car contacted something
hard right on the driver’s door, which had injured my mom, but I wasn’t aware
then of what that “something” was. The next
thing I remember seeing was my mom’s face as she lay unconscious,
her eyes open, across the top of the front seat. I was chilled to see her like
that. Still, I had no idea how seriously she was hurt. All I knew was that if
she was unconscious, it meant she’d been knocked out by something. Meanwhile, I
could not see my Dad at all. I seemed to be okay but could not move at all; my leg seemed to
be pinned in place by the
front seat which seemed to have moved sideways during the collision.
After that, I’m not sure what happened next.
I felt numbed by the impact. I was told much later that the fire department had
arrived speedily to examine the accident scene. Apparently, a neighbour nearby
had heard a loud crash and called 911. The EMS guys had also arrived to examine
my mother and father first for life-threatening injuries. I was left for last
since I didn’t seem to be injured at all. Apparently, the firefighters had been
forced to cut the roof of the car right off in order to get me out of the
backseat. I didn’t know until later on that they’d done this, nor was I aware
of the reason. As it turned out, it was impossible to open the back door on the
driver side of the car.
I was taken to Sunnybrook Hospital by
ambulance after my parents had already been taken there, but I still had no
idea how bad off they were. It was only at the hospital that I was finally told
the terrible news—my father was critically injured and my beloved mother was dead!
Dad had suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung, but at least he had survived.
Tragically, Mom had died of a blunt-force trauma to the head that had killed
her instantly.
Apparently, the car had hit a cement hydro
pole right on the driver door after spinning out of control. I was completely
devastated to hear this, as were my sister, Carrie, and her husband, Matthew,
who arrived at the hospital’s emergency department shortly after I’d arrived
there.
It was my Mom’s untimely death on Christmas
Day that hit me so hard. Every member of my family was terribly shocked by the
news. The police had asked me what had happened. That’s when I told them about
the snow drift in the middle of Sheppard Avenue—how the left wheels kept
getting caught in it—and about all the snow that was on the eastbound lanes
where we were driving probably covering black ice on the road.. They came to
the conclusion that she could not have caused this tragic accident. Nobody
believed Mom had personally done anything wrong while driving out there in that
horrific snowstorm.
With the exception of my dad, who was still
in the hospital, on December 29, 2002, we all had to attend Mom’s funeral and
were now faced with how to accept this horrible loss in our lives. For the next
several weeks, I was totally immersed in grief. I was away from work for at
least two weeks since I could not find it in myself to face my students at
school under these circumstances. There is no way I could have concentrated on
teaching my kids. I just fervently hoped they would understand; I had no
intention of forgetting about them, but I could not go back there just yet.
And, for the hundredth time, I wondered why
this tragedy had had to happen on Christmas Day or why it had to happen at all.
All I knew was, Christmas would never be the same again for any of us, without
my mom there. We had always loved her so much and always would.
copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
No comments:
Post a Comment